About

Loredana Polezzi studied Modern Languages at the University of Venice and then at the University of Siena, where she obtained her first degree in 1987. She later completed an MA in Italian Studies (Applied Linguistics) and a Phd in Translation Studies at the University of Warwick. In the early nineties she taught at the University of Birmingham, before returning to Warwick, where she is currently Reader in Italian Studies. She was Director of the Humanities Research Centre in 1999-2000 and 2001-2002. She is currenty Academic Director of the Warwick Venice Centre and Academic Lead of the university-wide 'Connecting Cultures' Global Research Priority programme.

Research interests

Her research focuses on the history of travel writing and the connection between geographical and social mobility on the one hand and, on the other, the theories and practices of translation. She has written widely on travel to Italy, as well as on contemporary Italian travel writing. Her monograph Translating Travel: Contemporary Italian Travel Writing in English Translation (Aldershot & Brookfield: Ashgate, 2001) is devoted to the critical debate concerning Italian travel literature and to the effects of translation on the reception of twentieth-century Italian travelogues. Her interests in translation, travel and mobility are also reflected in the special issue of The Translator devoted to ‘Translation, Travel, Migration’ (Autumn 2006), which she guest-edited, and in two co-edited issues of the journals Studies in Travel Writing and Textus, both published in 2012 and devoted to the literature of travel. Together with Rita Wilson (Monash University) she is the editor of the leading international journal The Translator. She is currently working on a monograph examinig representations of Africa produced by Italian travellers during the colonial and post-colonial period. A series of articles on this topic have already appeared in journals such as Modern Italy, Italian Studies, Anglistica, Romance Studies. She is also co-editor, with Jennifer Burns, of Borderlines: Migrazioni e identità nel Novecento (Isernia: Cosmo Iannone Editore, 2003) and, with Charlotte Ross, of In Corpore: Bodies in Post-Unification Italy (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson, 2007).

Synergies between Dr Polezzi’s research on the literature of Italian colonial and economic emigration and Jennifer Burns’s research on immigration literature have led to a number of research and teaching initiatives. Burns and Polezzi organized a conference at Warwick in 2002, entitled ‘Borderlines’, which brought together scholars from around the world to discuss the impact of emigration, internal migration and immigration, as expressed in literary texts and cinema, on the notion of Italian national identity. Papers from this conference were subsequently published in the bilingual volume Borderlines.

Burns and Polezzi received funding under the AHRC's ‘Diasporas, Migration and Identities’ programme for a series of workshops and a two-day colloquium on the topic of ‘Mobility and Identity Formation: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the “Italian case”’ (2006-2007). These events took the specific case of Italy and its multiple histories of migration outwards, inwards and within, and placed it in the context of concepts and studies of migration in other national contexts and in other disciplines, such as English, French and German Studies, Sociology, Law, Film and Theatre Studies.

Drs Burns and Polezzi are currently acting as co-invetigators in the project 'Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures' which was awarded 1.8 million by the AHRC under the 'Translating Cultures' theme. The project looks at the Italian communities established in the UK, the US, Australia, South America, Africa and at the migrant communities of contemporary Italy. It focuses on the cultural associations that each community has formed, their cultural production and their translation strategies. From the insights it develops into transnational Italian cultures, the project will forge a new framework for the discipline of Modern Languages as a whole, one which puts the interaction of languages and cultures at its core.

Teaching and supervision

PhD students supervised

Giorgia Alu' (with the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies), ‘Beyond the Observation of the 'Traveller': The Other and the Self in the Writings of Anglo-Sicilian Women (1848-1910).’ (Completed)

Serena Bassi, ‘Imagining Today’s Italy through Translation: An Analysis of Italian Contemporary Literature in English Translation in the British Publishing Market.’ (Completed)

Giorgia Carta (co-supervision with English), ‘The Other Half of the Story: the Interaction between Original and Translated Literature for Children in Italy.’ (Completed)

Matthew Coneys (with Simon Gilson), ‘Mandeville in Italy: The Imagination of the Far East in Italian Versions of the Travels.’

Tiziana Giordano (with the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies), ‘Re-thinking the Links between Fiction and Historiography: A Comparative Study of Contemporary British and Italian Women's Writing.’ (Completed)

Linde Luijnenburg (with Jennifer Burns), 'Hidden Postcolonial Traces in Italian Cinema. Representations of the Black Other in the commedia all’italiana.'

Caterina Sinibaldi, ‘Between Censorship and Propaganda: The Translation and Rewriting of Children's Literature during Fascism.’ (Completed)

Paola Toninato (with the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies), ‘The Rise of Written Literature among the Roma: A Study of the Role of Writing in the Current Re-definition of Romani Identity with Specific Reference to the Italian Case.’ (Completed)

L. Polezzi,‘Of Migrants and Working Men: How Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete Travelled between the US and Italy through Translation’, in Perspectives on Literature and Translation: Creation, Circulation, Reception, ed. by B. Nelson and B. Maher (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 161-77

L. Polezzi and E. Di Piazza (eds), Textus, special issue on ‘Travel Writing and the Shape of the World’, XXV: 2 (May-December 2012)